I opened up this topic when we considered Left Brain and Right Brain. Depending on the definition of creativity with which you’re most comfortable will directly affect where you mark yourself on this continuum. Is creativity the invention of something new to the world? Or is it a new view of the world in which we live? Does finding out that an original thought of yours has been captured and acted upon in another place and time? As I also mentioned earlier, I like Sir Robinson’s view on creativity; that we are all born with it and then the structure and curriculum of today’s education robs us of the opportunity.

The choice here is between being creative and being customary. Let me also define customary because it’s probably not often used in this context. Customary is following what has gone before. Sustaining the status quo.

And yet when I apply the more open definition of creativity to the habitual, orthodox, and traditional I see that we can be creative from within these spaces just as readily as when we gear up to be visionary. Our ability to be creative is in large measure about the quality of our conversations with ourselves and the credibility we give to the ideas that bubble up. I love the inner conversations. Sometimes slow and sequential as they take you to an ah ha moment, sometimes as a flash that emerges from nowhere and yet compels you to do something about it. An epiphany.

We can start to see the big S Self in place of the s self as we reflect on how we respond to our own thoughts and ideas. Are you willing to bring them out into the light, or will you shelter them behind a wall of customary responses to the issue at heart.

Creative

• Innovative
• Visionary
• Fertile
• Inspired
• Inventive

Customary

• Traditional
• Normal
• Habitual
• Orthodox
• Standard

What you talk about becomes what you do